The 1890s

March 24, 1898

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For the US economy in the 1880s, it was the best of times and the worst of times. Industrial output boomed until the spring of 1893, when a confluence of events sent the country into the worst depression in its history. The country would not recover until after McKinley's victory over William Jennings Bryan in the presidential election of 1896. Bryan was a powerful orator whose "cross of gold" speech at the Democratic convention was one of the most memorable addresses ever delivered, but the Democrats' meager war chest was no match for the GOP's coffers. The Republicans were so confident of victory that McKinley's campaign was conducted almost entirely on his front porch.

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The Wreckage of the USS Maine

Following the election, the surging economy and the need for new markets and raw materials, combined with the growing influence of yellow journalism, moved the United States toward war with Spain over Cuba and the Philippines. All it needed was a spark. It came on February 15, 1898, when a  mysterious explosion sunk the USS Maine in Havana harbor. To many Americans, the brief war that followed  smacked of nothing more than American  imperialism.

The Depression of 1893 inspired a unique (but unsuccessful) protest on behalf of the unemployed. Jacob Coxey, a progressive Ohio politician, led a group of 100 unemployed workers on a march from his home state  to  Washington, DC, to demand that the government create jobs. The Depression also exacerbated already increasing tensions between capital and labor. In 1882, workers and Pinkertons fought pitched battles around the Homestead Works plant, owned by Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick (who was shot and stabbed by Alexander Berkman in protest against the violence). The Pullman strike in Chicago was another violent struggle. It ended in victory for Pullman when a judge used the Sherman Anti-Trust Act against Eugene V. Debs's American Railway Union. The injunction set unionism back on its heels for nearly half a century. Civil rights also received a major blow when the US Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld Louisiana's Jim Crow law for railroad cars.